Fourth Survivor
by scubapus
Summary: The Grim Reaper, they called him. Then they laughed. Then they died, same as always. All had infiltrated NEST but only one would survive the infected necropolis Raccoon City had become. [RE2 Remake]


_Original title is original. This stemmed from the first RE2 Remaster gameplay I eyeballed on YouTube prior to its release. I consider it a brain dump that isn't my usual style but was pretty fun to write. I tried to incorporate a bit of everything relevant...because I could, and so I did._

 _Notes: I separated Nighthawk and Lone Wolf because Capcom can't get its shit together. HUNK and his pilot knew each other in earlier games. I also prefer HUNK as opposed to Hunk. Habit, perhaps? I've seen it both ways. He's large and in charge._

 _I'm on the lookout for new friends with common interests. Hit me up!_

* * *

Operation Nestwrecker had been a shit show. HUNK had had missions go to hell before but coming to in a sewer with broken ribs and a concussion took the cake. Relying on his instincts to remind him what the fuck was up and needed to be done was something he marveled at at a later time, when he'd been disarmed of a fucking nightmare of a virus, patched up, and debriefed.

The fact was, he'd almost lost his ass to a nuclear blast. There wasn't any coming back from that one, had it happened. The possibility of such a measure had always been present in their line of work, reserved for worst case scenarios, but for all the missions he had completed, that had never come into play.

Raccoon City was the exception. As a man who prepared for the worst, he had anticipated encountering a mission of its conclusion at least once prior to his retirement.

He had a long ways to go.

Just as Alpha team, unbeknownst to them at the time, had a far longer mission than any of them had anticipated when they had infiltrated Raccoon's underground lab.

They had located Birkin just as he had loaded up the case with vials and auto-injectors, himself, Durgan, and Kirkpatrick storming in as Martinez dropped from his vantage point in the ducts. It became immediately apparent that the scientist was armed, one hand slipping beneath his lab coat, the other hugging the case possessively.

Clearly the virologist was beyond rationality, his eyes wild and that of a cornered animal. Few civilians would respond differently when half surrounded by heavily armed soldiers, their assault rifles raised with him in the crosshairs. It was the delirium vivid in Birkin's visage that made him dangerous.

The commanding officer, aware of the precariousness of the situation, raised his flattened left hand and kept his other off his firearms. In doing so, his intention was to be placating and provide nonthreatening body language not otherwise apparent beneath his gear.

HUNK spoke immediately, understanding the importance of opening non-confrontational lines of communication. The sooner the situation was diffused, the better the outcome of their objectives.

"Dr. Birkin, you'll come along with us quietly."

Not a suggestion but an order. The best option and yet the least likely. They had all understood the odds in advance. Birkin's expression of extreme desperation and pure revulsion for their existence further proved that his chances of valuing his comfort over his pride was instantaneously nullified.

If only it had been that easy. The fate of so many would have drastically changed. The survival of his squad would have been guaranteed.

But he had his reputation for a reason.

 _Grim Reaper. Soul survivor._

To think, during transport, his subordinates had laughed at the alias. To think they'd considered themselves infallible.

Didn't they know that those before them had committed that exact same mistake?

"You think I didn't know you were coming?" challenged the virologist, brilliant based on his profession. But even then, under Umbrella's employ and strict control, such a restrictive measure was common knowledge.

Birkin was no fool. That only meant he had preconceived plans of how this event would unfold. None of them involved compliance.

"This is my life's work," he defended, sounding drained, but then with sudden renewed intensity, he raised his voice, "I'm not handing over _anything_!"

"We have our orders, Doctor Birkin," HUNK responded firmly. As if he needed to defend their actions. More than anything, it was to state their determination and compliance to Command. "I'll ask you one more time..."

In hindsight, he should have intervened then, when he saw Birkin's wild eyes snap over to Durgan, perceiving his slightest motion as a threat. He could have disarmed Birkin with precise gunfire. Could have seized the rabid scientist and performed a physical maneuver to forcibly remove his handgun, even as the angered man raised it-

But sudden gunfire had roared past his left and slaughtered Birkin in less than a second, sending sprays of blood everywhere as rounds punched through starched lab coat and the man beneath. Kirkpatrick's yell of "Hold your fire!" was too damn late and wouldn't have corrected the situation to begin with.

Motherfucking Martinez - acting out of character and caught up in the tension of the situation, had been the trigger happy bastard responsible for Birkin's demise. So certain that he had trained him far better - he would have never allowed such a jumpy liability to be on their team - HUNK had stared forward in stoic disbelief.

Before them, Birkin's body crumpled to the ground, traumatized nerves still twitching as blood steadily poured from the dozen holes in his body.

Silently, he had stepped aside, Kirkpatrick coming forward to inspect the damages - an unnecessary element of protocol. If Birkin wasn't dead yet, his wounds were fatal. If he still had a pulse, it would cease at any moment. His fate was sealed.

Watching the black-clad back of his subordinate and seeing the frustrated jerk of his head, HUNK allowed himself a forced exhale laden with frustration. The degree of aggravation that struck him was uncustomary and the total insubordination involved set fire to his patience. It would have only taken a split second to correct and yet instead, he chose to reprimand his teammate.

"What in the fuck were you thinking?!" he seethed, gravelly voice as caustic as acid. He took one aggressive step, then two, imposing himself straight in the soldier's masked face. "Our orders were to bring him in alive!"

A fucking fact that had been hammered into the very skull of the man who had conveniently lost sight of their objectives - and the reality that in such a situation, it was preferable for one of their own to sustain an injury in exchange for safely apprehending their target.

What a fucking mess he had to clean up. There would have been even more hell to pay if he had damaged the samples.

HUNK had beared down on his cowering subordinate a moment longer before jerking his head away, knowing that if he hadn't, he might have taken further corrective action. At that point, it would achieve nothing.

Seizing his own reins, he redirected himself to the task at hand: reporting in and explaining the unfortunate result of their encounter.

"We're in, Sir," he informed Command, "but we had a snafu. Target resisted," he said, turning to face Martinez and lock concealed eyes with him in order to confirm a unified understanding. "We had to take him out."

A manipulative contortion of the truth - one he despised, yet made out of loyalty to his men. It was his belief that they were all accountable for the outcome of one's actions. Spreading the blame equally among their unit suggested that there were no alternatives, likely sparing Martinez and his lapse of judgment.

Aligned with his role as Commander, HUNK would enforce corrective action later.

Silent as the undercurrent within the squadron was, they recognized HUNK's actions as significant. It wasn't the first time he had covered someone's ass. Wouldn't be the last. Damned if it didn't go against his training and professional morals but there were unspoken laws of standing besides one's men. It was virtually second nature. Chances were, all of their necks would be on the line to some extent.

The fact that he, as their leader, took on responsibility wasn't lost on them. The potential for punishment to fall heavily on him was both implied and invited by his authoritative position.

He wasn't a fucking coward.

Command's smooth British accent came across as suitably disapproving. The unfortunate turn of events meant they had lost one of their most brilliant masterminds - perhaps the only one who understood G.

Their other specialists could eventually analyze and study it but time was money, and time and money it would take, both valuable resources.

Damn Birkin. If only he hadn't resisted, he could have continued pursuing his aspirations.

"...Birkin has been confirmed dead?" the speaker clarified.

"That's correct, Sir," HUNK gravely responded.

Surely Command had taken into account that possible outcome, particularly given that intel collected knew Birkin was preparing to hand over himself and G to the United States government.

"That's unfortunate...but the G-virus is our priority. He should be in possession of the full payload," said Command, but not without adding with distaste: "Leave his traitorous body for his wife."

"Roger that. Just the samples then," reiterated the Alpha leader. A simpler task than lugging a human body around, not that he was paid to care.

Annette Birkin had been another target of theirs, but evidently Command saw it fit to punish her with the deceased remains of her spouse and the morbid proof that their legacy had been stolen.

Or, as both Birkin's failed to comprehend, taken back by its rightful owners.

Situated nearest to the sample case, Kirkpatrick was quick to react and seize it from the floor. It would remain in his capable possession, with standard procedure dictating that the other members of their squad would defensively surround him.

Time was of the essence. It was time to retreat back through the sewers and hail extraction.

"Let's move," was his blunt order, and he leaned into Martinez's respirator-clad face again to drive home the fact that he was still in deep shit before pushing past him.

There was no pride gained from hearing the soldier swallow, proverbially pissing his pants in the face of Death. It was a combination of strict training and respect for his reputation that kept his subordinates in line...with Birkin's avoidable demise the exception.

It was that mistake that bit them in the ass - or more literally knocked them about like pinballs. The coast had been clear up until the sewers, where they had encountered a much unexpected and mutated Birkin. It appeared that he had somehow injected himself with G, which had rapidly and grotesquely mutated the scientist with an emphasis on his gunshot wounds.

The creature that had smashed a sewer gate clean off its hinges and pursued them, half bloated with massive conglomeration of corded, inhuman muscle and a bulbous eye rotating in its shoulder socket, would be the end of his teammates…

But not of him.

The severity of the situation demanded he take the lead and target the monstrosity in the iron sights of his MP-5, unloading a clip at rapid succession in a spray spanning from Birkin's rage-laden face and the oversized eyeball. In doing so, his intention had been to defend the G-sample and allow the others to continue their retreat. The sooner they regrouped with Ghost and the second half of their unit, the better.

HUNK could barely remember what happened next. Only that Birkin, his giant body dominating the confined passageway, had managed to strike Durgan with a swing of his mutated arm and had propelled the soldier directly into him. The force of their collision had knocked him clean off his booted feet and then blackness had overcame everything. Presumably, his head had struck the brick wall that stopped him.

His helmet could only do so much to spare a concussion. At that velocity, with that force, there was no chance of sparing himself.

He came to to the sounds of his teammate begging Birkin to spare the other's life...and Durgan's dead weight strewn half across him.

" _Please...oh….please….stop….S-stop!..."_

Suffering. The voice of incapacitation. Of the dying, weak and tearful...barely audible over gunfire. Kirkpatrick.

" _Don't…! Don't….no...no, no!"_

The stronger scream of another. Martinez. Angry and drawing attention to himself, the noise of his onslaught hammering chisels of ice into HUNK's ringing skull.

He'd been as dead weight as the corpse partially across him. Gravity still proved too much. Hadn't even opened his eyes but had jolted, violently, just once as his mind struggled to connect with his nerves.

A weak wail now, shamelessly begging, _"Don't hurt him…! Don't hurt him…!"_

A crash ceased the gunfire abruptly. Sobs ensued, exhausted and succumbing to hopelessness.

Blackness again, consciousness slipping away from him.

Those voices would later invade his dreams against his will, though he never submitted to their relentless attempts at torment.

Hours before, the U.S.S. had been situated on their benches, the Blackhawk helicopter powerfully chopping through the sky with its massive blades.

The discussion most had among themselves had been deemed irrelevant by HUNK. He had sunken into his own mind, silent as a statue and as concentrated as marble. It wasn't until their hefty chuckling caught his attention that he acknowledged their existence, though behind the polycarbonate of his lenses, they couldn't recognize his watchful eyes.

Members of their unit had been energized by their mission, exhibiting that gung-ho giddiness that accompanied detrimental confidence. Based on their behaviors, HUNK was able to determine which among them would last longer than the rest. As a rule, those who felt the highest in excitement and enamorment with themselves had the furthest to fall...and therefore struggled the most to adapt when the terms they faced inevitable turned out to not be their own.

They were referring to him, he could tell by their tones. Just as all the others had before them.

"Sure we shouldn't make a will?" one sneered with sarcastic rhetoric. Or maybe he made the mistake of thinking their superior would afford them any hint of reaction.

He didn't, nor did he care that all their eyes were fixed on him in the slightest.

"Doesn't matter how tough the mission is," another boasted, chest puffed like a proud rooster, unearned pride just as mindless. "We'll survive."

"And even if the unit gets wiped out," chipped in a third - Goblin 6, leave it to a woman to consider the possibilities and not be blinded by testosterone - "he always comes back."

"The U.S.S. Grim Reaper," another added with mocking wonder. At that, the majority of them joined in with the boisterous laughter.

HUNK said nothing, opting instead to grant them credit for having the balls to conduct themselves in such a manner around their superior. Their lack of control and integrity emphasized the distance separating a soldier of his aptitude from their childish dispositions. Clearly throughout their military backgrounds, their commanding officers didn't instill the fear of death into them sufficiently enough or correct their arrogance.

But, that was the problem with Spec Ops. Soldiers enlisted who felt they'd experienced everything in their former military tours of duty. They mistook themselves for invincible or valued themselves as far more capable than they were. They so readily failed to recognize that similar soldiers had once been stationed in their places. The reality that they had been hired as replacements for men and women who had met their same qualifications should have been sobering to them...same as the factual foundation of his reputation.

For him to have discouraged support personnel from spreading his reputation and bolstering this ongoing mockery would have required for him to give a shit. He had more pressing matters, with actual importance, to tend to and circumvented bullshit whenever able. As far as he was concerned, it was better to starve a burdensome creature than continue to feed it...and so he didn't, yet because others did, it continued to follow him.

He had spared but a moment to wonder if those same men would women would accompany him on his next mission or if, like so often before, their corpses would be left behind with no prospect of retrieval...as so many others had been...their families left guessing and incomplete.

He trusted his instincts. Even then, he swore he could feel their fate in his bones.

He wouldn't have been at all disappointed if his intuition mislead him. He was not always the sole survivor. Sometimes missions went off without high mortality hitches. Then those who acknowledged his reputation advanced to that stage of it-won't-be-me incredulity - as though the possibility had never existed and like his alias was associated with terrible bedtime stories told only to gullible children.

At least then, there would not be a loss of valuable human resources...just yet, for as he knew, no one else lasted. Eventually, he would be the only one to rise from the ashes to fight again and repeat that vicious cycle.

And now, as time trickled back to him and pain ushered him to the present, he would wake to face yet another trial as the Grim Reaper.

An indeterminate time passed before awareness rose to the surface like rising bubbles of carbonation. Waking up from head trauma was a bitch. Engaging his arms and convincing them to do what he wanted them to do was bitchier. For a time, they flopped haphazardly at his sides, not obeying him worth a shit.

By the time he had been able to regain sufficient control of his limbs and force Durgan's remains off him, in order to upright himself, it had been far too late. He had sagged against the slimy brick wall, its chill seeping through his gloves to the clammy skin below, and steadied himself for what felt like an eternity before he shook what cobwebs he could from his head.

Somehow, HUNK forced himself to jog on legs made of wood, swaying to a breeze that didn't exist in the depths of the sewage system.

He didn't care about how much time had elapsed. Or, at that point, pay mind to his own condition. As far as he was concerned, if he could stand, he could walk. If he could walk, he could carry his firearms. He could aim them, with some adjustment given his splitting headache.

Then it hit him, too damn late - those teammates had been in possession of G, and if they'd been killed-

The realization struck him like an arctic waterfall, shocking him further back to his senses and, more vitally, his sense of duty.

He'd found his bearings. He'd found two of his fallen comrades and with them, the scattered remains of the lab case.

Ghost and the others were nowhere to be found, meaning the two halves of Alpha had never united. Though unknown to HUNK at the time, he would never see traces of Goblin 6, Miguel, or Conrad ever again...but had presumed them to be confirmed casualties given absent communication.

Numerous vials had been shattered on the ground, their contents long seeped out and contaminated, the latter reality a double-edged blade - meaning that the environment had also been...if the shrieking rats that raced at him were any indication.

They came from the shadows, their flesh frayed and covered in pustules, their eyes cataract, their aggression inorganic. His boots made quick work of them, his weight driving down on their rancid bodies, viscera and half coagulated blood squirting from their gaping mouths.

There had been six of them, half their numbers diverting to the bodies of his squad members. Made it all the easier to dispatch them, though he trusted his abilities to gun them down had there been a need. Instead, the only rounds fired were sent through the temples of his deceased teammates - but given the picked condition of their corpses, he didn't want to risk them reanimating. He couldn't confirm that they, like him, had been preemptively immunized.

Those two bullets, he could spare for his brothers in arms.

In that moment, there had been some degree of uncertainty. Moles had been placed in Birkin's lab to collect intel on the G-virus, yet their success had been limited. Paranoid as the virologist was, he had severely restricted access to the data and the virus itself. That recognized, it remained uncertain how G was transmitted..but given how the condition of the rats resembled that caused by the T-virus, HUNK felt he could safely assume that it wasn't airborne or contagious via contact - not that he planned to find out.

Infection was a far more personal method of transporting the G-virus than he'd signed up for.

Seeing the destroyed remains of the vials there about shit on any potential he'd had to retrieving G and scavenging together some degree of completing his objectives. He'd seized the open case and turned it this way and that, all six previously occupied foam cutouts emptied. Figures he'd have no such luck that one would remain.

He'd grit his molars in rare frustration and caught himself squeezing his knuckles so tightly, each cracked sickly within the damp confines of his gloves...and only then had he had the mind to visually seek out the end caps associated with each vial - the only components still intact, metal instead of glass.

Scattered as they were, he had counted and recounted five times before he dared to take a breath - then he promptly doubted his concussive ability to perform remedial mathematics. He could visually confirm ten end caps. There were two per vial, accounting for five samples, which meant-

Had his heart not been so steel and cold, it may have skipped a beat. Instead, he hurried over to the grating that comprised that tunnel floor and shined his flashlight down into it, searching hastily yet thoroughly for any indication of the absent components - shining metal, dull from denting, anything-

Nothing.

From his vantage point, there was only one likely possibility - and he seized it, literally, as he raced over to Kirkpatrick's body and dug his fingers into fabric, his ribs screaming as he half lifted the dead body.

There, beneath it, a miraculous sight if he ever saw one: the glint of a concealed vial, beckoning him menacingly. His breath caught in his dry throat as he reached for it, encasing it in his gloved hand to bring it up before the red polycarbonate of his lenses.

Tangible. Not an apparition or trick of his injured mind.

It appeared intact, fluid contents shifting gracefully within its transparent confines. Stamped in the metal exterior, a basic identifying mark: G. That was all he needed - he didn't require removing his mask and visually confirming its violet coloration. Aside from fine debris smeared across it, it was unblemished.

In their mission, they'd lost Birkin. He'd lost his team. He'd lost all but one vial of the very thing that entire damn operation was based on.

But he'd take it. He'd fucking take it, because he still had a mission to do. Because then everything wouldn't have been for nothing. Because Umbrella had ordered him to. And he refused to fail.

After laying his teammate to rest one final time, he deposited the G-virus in the most secure and reinforced compartment of his gear. Having faced the monstrosity that Birkin had become, and all-too-aware of his presence in the sewer still, HUNK had made the calculated decision to return to the bodies of his fallen squad and obtain their munitions. He had shouldered one's W-870 shotgun, the other's light hawk magnum, and collected their rounds, dispensing them throughout the pockets of his gear after ensuring each was fully loaded with a round in the chamber. He'd pocketed grenades, clips, and bullets, finding a sense of belonging beneath their weight. Better at his disposal, as his teammates no longer needed them.

Then, having regrouped, he set out down the path he had memorized, his sure willpower forcing his mind to focus.

It had been a risk that Birkin could have returned to the area but he had made short work of his preparations. He'd also given the creature some credit, as some semblance of human still existed in its otherwise mutated form. If the mutant could still spew out words, he figured it might remain capable of basic thought - for now. Enough to know that the uninfected dead remained dead and therefore he would hunt elsewhere.

Still, HUNK knew that time was of the essence. The sooner he reached extraction, the sooner he handed the G-virus to Command, the sooner his mission could be a success.

It failed to matter how heavily armed he had been - it couldn't have accounted for all the infected lurching about, bodies strewn throughout the city to account for all the unprepared civilians. Or the mutants Birkin had produced, implanted into and born from those who could have never anticipated their gruesome fate. Or the number of other creatures to have succumb to the virus, like the canines who had fur and flesh unrolling from their bones when he had encountered them.

He hadn't anticipated crossing paths with any living entity - but he had partially been wrong.

HUNK had emerged from the restricted access point of the labs to the unexpected hailing of a pilot, the voice different than he had been accustomed to.

" _This is Nighthawk. Come in Alpha...Alpha, do you read?"_

Unfamiliar as he was with the man, he knew of the codename. The USS had two pilots, but typically Lone Wolf worked with his unit.

Later, he would learn that Lone Wolf had been sniped from the sky by an unknown, but suspected, shooter.

There was no trap involved. No one knew of the USS presence, nor would any third party have been privy to their mission, the codename of one of their own, or the frequency over which to contact them.

"Nighthawk," he'd responded, having taken a necessary moment to lower his focused guard, "This is HUNK from Alpha team." Standard procedure: confirm identity and unit.

The pilot had sounded relieved in a manner that was...uncustomary for their profession, to say the least.

"Man," he began, tone aggravatingly casual and lacking the sense of urgency demanded by their mission, "I thought you were all wiped out-"

"I'm at point K12," interjected HUNK abruptly, cutting to the chase. There was no time for anything else. "Need info on my extraction."

He would be extracted. There were no doubts regarding that. No remote thought to the possibility of how much time had passed or if Umbrella had ended the mission.

Lacking his urgency, Nighthawk didn't get the fucking hint. It couldn't have been more evident.

"Guess there's no keeping down the Grim Reaper, huh?" commented the pilot in audible amusement.

"My extraction point," he repeated tensely. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. His terseness and the tone of his voice, while monotonous, implied irritability. His impatience should have been vivid given his unwillingness to address anything else.

" _Relax_ , Mr. Reaper," suggested the pilot, and HUNK grit his teeth as he could just see the man rolling his eyes - and entirely missing the fucking point or purpose behind his single-mindedness. "I'm headed towards the front gate of R.P.D. Pick you up there."

If only it had been that easy.

It turned out that Birkin had been the least of his worries. Past the labs, the sewers had been a cesspool of infected. How so many carriers had ended up in the tunnels was beyond him. Presumably most had been civilians attempting to escape the outbreak on ground level. Some must have fallen through manholes disheveled or destroyed in battles. Either way, the previous cakewalk Alpha had previously had when approaching Birkin's lab had gone to shit, replaced by a labyrinth of relentless zombies.

Every passageway he entered, and every door he opened, only lead to more and more infected. In the sewers alone, he must have been outnumbered a hundred to one. Most were dodged easily enough. Others, he cut down with short bursts of gunfire, knocking them down and with his rifle butt, aside, taking any measure to make his way out.

Milky eyes fixated on him as he entered each room, their attentions drawn to his motions - except those occupied with feasting on the flesh of their kills, jaws gnashing and tissues snapping against their chewing teeth. In their mindless hunger, they gorged themselves, as the wandering others convulsed and staggered toward him.

Whether the lickers he had encountered had been released, escaped the lab, or mutated beyond it didn't matter to him. He only knew for certain that they had to be made short work of. He didn't dare attempt to outrun them or otherwise outmaneuver them and their agility, particularly in his concussed condition. Upon encountering the first, he reserved his .50AE rounds for them, with the shotgun a capable enough backup.

From its place on the walkway ceiling, it had shrieked and charged at him, elongated tongue unfurling from its jagged-toothed mouth as he raised his light hawk and fired, the magnum reacting with its powerful kick and mammoth _boom._

The licker's brains erupted in a shower of grey matter and blood, its legs pumping another clawing stride, its momentum carrying it forward. It then abruptly fell to the ground, dropping straight down like a bag of soiled laundry, its limbs buckling. With a grisly death rattle, it shuddered to the end of its abominable existence.

The dobermans were the worst of it - faster and more agile than humans. Surrounded by a pack as HUNK had found himself, one had launched off its hind legs and latched onto his arm. The dripping teeth that fought through fabric to tear into him barely succeeded - would have transmitted infection had he not been immunized. The series of antibiotics that followed his escape had been extensive, but in the moment, he had thought of nothing but the next step ahead of him. He didn't spare a second for the cerberus that tore hungrily at the pinned zombie that groaned wetly and reached for him.

Adrenaline had spared him some degree of his injuries, pumping rapidly through his veins, invigorating his muscle fibers, sharpening his perception. It was that alone that physical propelled him across clanging steel walkways and chilled cement floors, his boots skidding through coagulating pools of blood. Throughout, the noise of his pained grunting and huffing remained audible.

The R.P.D. was a bloodbath, its walls and floors coated in gore. Clearly it had been the place where many had made their last stand, with the number of carriers present accounting for them. The blue interior of numerous rooms made the crimson that much darker. In some, as the infected lurched in pursuit, they stumbled over massacred bodies, their feet leaving bloody trails as they disturbed the thick, sticky pool around them.

Some tripped and toppled over their own detached limbs, crashing into desks topped with personal effects from the people they had once been.

The furnished confines of the police building demanded a necessary drain of resources. He could only circumvent the masses but found it fully necessary to drill through those in his path with short bursts of rifle rounds before switching firearms and felling them with his explosive shotgun.

Shell after shell had torn through bodies, some aimed at knees, shredding joints necessary for bipedal mobility. Others at faces with the intention of destroying brain matter at most or blinding the carriers with bursts of blood and eye jelly, hindering their pursuit. Fragments of skull had deflected off his lenses, ricocheting off the walls of narrow environments, liquified viscera splashing wetly around. Soured entrails smattered across his uniform, his respirator sparing him the scent, his rattling exhalations wheezing through the filter.

The human body never ceased to amaze him - particularly his own. He had pushed through the wreckage of the sewers and that godforsaken police station in rough shape. Had faced what seemed like a thousand stairs, miles of water resistance, and more ladders than his exhausted mind had been capable of counting, all without days of hydration or sustenance. The constant pinch of his broken ribs had restricted him to drawing only the shallowest of breaths, all while that damn situation had demanded constant and exerting motion.

In effect, reaching his extraction had been both his best and worst showing. He'd been in shit shape. And covered in shit from the sewers. Unconscious as he'd been while the city had undergone viral meltdown, he'd pissed himself a number of times. He'd lost his entire unit - yet again. All because of some very avoidable lapses in judgment and a trigger happy subordinate. And yet somehow, he'd managed to make it out with mere minutes to spare, carrying what was possibly the world's worst nightmare contained in a vial on his person.

There had been doubt of his ability to escape, particularly when he had reached the main hall and found evac temporarily inaccessible. Plans had changed when he had discovered the front door to the building blocked and the foyer occupied by a number of interfering carriers. He had opted to find another route.

His decision had been made even before Nighthawk had expressed his mounting impatience, the tables between them having turned.

"What the hell, HUNK?" demanded Nighthawk with sudden impatience. "You're late for extraction."

In response to the neutrality of the soldier's reply, two outcomes were possible for the pilot: he either found it unnervingly calm and void of urgency or he found reassurance in his confidence.

Possibly a combination of both, as he no longer seemed to be gnawing his nails.

"Front door's blocked. Gotta find another way out," stated HUNK as means of explanation and plan of action. There was no time for arguments - a fact that the pilot confirmed.

"Heads up - guys at the top just ordered a full clean-up of Raccoon City. So move fast or you can kiss your ass goodbye."

Even over the rapid gunfire of his MP5 raging and echoing throughout the open space, shredding through carriers with sprays of copper fluids, the message was loud and clear. Given the extent of the infection, and the overwhelming evidence that Raccoon City had been decimated by the T-virus, it didn't take a rocket scientist to guess Umbrella's corrective action.

Really, there were no options. Thermonuclear destruction of the city was the only measure there was.

If HUNK hadn't been busting his ass before, he'd started then. He'd continued carving his way through hordes of enemies, taking aim at countless ashened faces. At the groaning, reaching undead that lunged for him, their gray skin sloughing off, their eyeballs rupturing like grapes as he gunned them down. From then on, he felt nothing but purpose, his shoulder seamlessly absorbing the rapid recoil through the stock braced against him.

Other lickers were strewn throughout the station. One, he hadn't had time to switch weapons for. It had lunged for him though out of nowhere, shrieking and immune to the pain of the shotgun blast he landed, a huge chunk of semi-putrid flesh violently detonating from its heaving shoulders.

It had nearly been on him, the tips of its deadly claws within six inches of his legs when it had finally succumb to its damages. Two more rounds had torn into its head and neck, each digging deeper than the previous.

The T-00 dispatched to retrieve G were drawn to him with murderous intent. In the complex terrain of a city, it was no coincidence that he had encountered not one but two of the stone-pallid behemoths. One had struck him with a backswing of its massive fist, sending him slamming into the hall wall, simultaneously knocking the wind from him and bleaching his vision white with agony.

HUNK had barely managed to push himself up from the ground when its boot crashed down and plunged through the floor to the plywood below. He'd used its temporary distraction to make his escape. He knew better than to take on the tyrant, having performed tactical analysis on it throughout its development. So when he encountered the other, on the second story, he removed his finger from the trigger of the magnum he had wielded.

It hadn't been the T-00 that had struck him - not directly. Instead, the broad swing of its arm had caught the torso of an infected female and knocked it into him. In the narrow hallway inhabited by the undead and the BOW's substantial width, there had been no room to maneuver and no possibility of dodging. His weight had been sent crashing through a collapsing piece of furniture.

Par for the course in his career. He had recovered and avoided sustaining further damage from his pursuer. For as powerful as they were, they were slow, and the soldier had become that much faster in his determination to survive. Adrenaline fueled him like a well-oiled machine, overcoming and erasing everything he had endured up until that point. And yet somehow, the vial in his custody grew heavier with dire importance as its pouch repeatedly struck his running hips.

Men like him weren't necessarily fit for carrying the fate of humanity in their possession, if namely because those afraid of chaos also feared for their existence while a soldier of his design did not.

Escaping Raccoon City had been reminiscent of getting his ass kicked in bootcamp back in those first days of military enlistment. He had been in piss poor shape back then too, malnourished yet expected to perform relentlessly. And he had. He'd always been a stubborn bastard. Never gave up. Never surrendered. Never knew when to lay down and die like he should have.

The R.P.D. had felt like a maze. Rerouting his trajectory from the front gate required him to cross the building, climb the stairs of the old and expansive building, backtrack across the upper story of cavernous main room, and eventually scale down the ladder leading to the back courtyard. His boots had just touched down from it when the pilot's panicked voice sounded in his ear, volume loud and his anxiety clear.

"HUNK! Time's up!" As though the inbound warhead would touchdown any second.

So be it.

"Go, Nighthawk," he ordered calmly. At least one of them could survive. There was no purpose behind another senseless loss. "Get out."

The pilot's mounting panic was a stark contrast to his stoic acceptance.

"I'm not gonna just leave you-"

"This is war...survival is your responsibility," HUNK told him - a motto if he'd ever had one. A lesson he had taught his subordinates. Those who were left lying in the sewers, their corpses due to be decimated at ground zero.

They hadn't had a choice.

Nighthawk's curse of " _Goddamnit_!" seemed that of a man reluctantly accepting the inevitable. Their communication cut off then and left the Alpha commander at peace - even as he faced a gathering of infected larger than he had yet encountered.

He'd had every intention of making his way through the crowd using brute force. As much as he had conserved ammunition and calculated his consumption of it, what remained was insufficient.

Like a battering ram, the soldier clashed with the infected in a torrent of motion, assault rifle raised as a melee weapon, the butt of its stock striking skulls. The carriers piled upon each other, their greedily clawing bodies constructing blockades of flashing teeth and filthy hair and postmortem skin. Slippery entrails glistened in the light, soaked cotton tore, and the mindless groaning of insatiable hunger permeated the humid air.

Among them, puffs of deadly pollen, spores dusting over his mask. The falling rain streaked through it, creating tracks across his lenses. Bloody saliva splattered in its place, as teeth audibly snapped at his respirator and flailing hands tore at his uniform, and yet he kept driving on, finger depressing the MP5's trigger and tearing through the undead with its final rounds.

Muzzle fire illuminated the gruesome scene of rotting bodies. Tendrils of writhing ivy struggled between open spaces, the infested creatures fighting to part the shields of meat blocking them from their prey. Their echoing _clicks_ cut through the sick rasping and wailing of the masses, their intensity increasing as they grew closer and closer, until they drowned out the sound of his own laboring, fighting growls.

The physical force that fought against him felt like that of an ocean wave, swelling and mounting and rising - and then breaking, when he refused to submit, with a sudden and intense release as he broke his way through the final set of resisting arms.

His fight wasn't over. Ahead of him, he could see the staggering silhouettes of more infected attempting to join the fray. Throwing the MP-5 aside on its sling, he racked the shotgun and raised it - but not before thumbing the pin off of a grenade and tossing it behind him.

HUNK rushed on, putting distance between himself and the explosive for when it detonated and succeeded, the ground shaking as it went off. Carcass parts flew, joined by masses of flesh and bone glossed in virus-riddled fluids, dotted by writhing chunks of mutated materials. Had he looked back, he would have seen two of Birkin's mutants crudely split asunder, their misshapen appendages spasmodically thrashing.

Quick work was made of the infected still standing in his path, the heads of those unavoidable bursting like bloody salad before the smeared muzzle of his shotgun.

As his boots struck the stairs ascending toward that final gate, he felt no sense of achievement or completion. HUNK had been so certain that the pilot would abandon his post. That he, himself, had no prospects of extraction. That he had been left behind to fight to his death, possibly one of the only living humans left in that godforsaken city.

Fuck, he'd told the pilot of his only extraction to get out and save himself, effectively leaving himself to face nuclear incineration and annihilation...and he had still pushed on, his survival instinct refusing to accept the odds.

He had never been more at ease, incapable of experiencing an essence of fear but instead fully accepting his ultimate mortality.

As far as he was concerned, Umbrella could extrapolate the events that had taken place - if they cared about anything beyond damage control at this point. Not every mission was analyzed. Without survivors or recordings to retrieve, there would be no evidence to account for the events that had conspired. But then it wouldn't be his fucking problem when he was reduced to dust within a crater the size of the entire city.

The seasoned soldier hadn't been so out of it to mistake the choppers searchlight for a hallucination. That situation just proved the balls the pilot had on him. Most others would have ran to save themselves, and if nothing else, the pilot's response to him asking why he'd come back had earned even more of his respect. That was a damn near impossible thing to do.

"I wanted to meet the Grim Reaper," Nighthawk had said with brimming anticipation. Only because of his recklessness, he would.

Nevertheless, the unlikely sight of the incoming Blackhawk had been a relief - not for his own survival, which had still remained uncertain at that point in time, but for the sake of his mission. Never had he failed. Reaching extraction had put him one necessary step closer to maintaining his reputation and succeeding in his objectives.

Looking back, HUNK knew he would have fought tooth and nail until nuclear explosion had engulfed him. Not even when he had reached the courtyard and encountered nothing but a small sea of mutants and infected had he considered quitting. He had forced his way through them, hand by hand, grappling and shoving zombies aside, violently clearing a path. He had wrestled with G's embryos and lodged grenades down their grotesque throats, the world consumed with gory motion and the sick howls and rasping gurgles of the undead mounting louder and louder in his covered ears.

Upon reaching the gate, he had kicked it open with the ferocity necessary to dare his own demise and carve his way through the entire damned city. He swore he would have fucking _made_ time if such a thing were possible. He had stared past the burning remains of a school bus with blood-soaked rifle in hand, immune to the scene of utter destruction and flames licking the sky, and felt every fiber of his being thriving in its element...and still carried the story of survival, that he would never tell, in the cells that defined him.

If Nighthawk had expected more from him post-extraction, he might have been disappointed. He hadn't asked. HUNK had unceremoniously shed his hundred pounds of wet gear, drank half a gallon of water, forcibly vomited when all the physical damage he'd undergone accumulated and caught up with him, and nearly put a fist through the side of the black hawk when his fractured ribs had reacted. Desperately dehydrated, he'd drank another half gallon against his better judgement, taped his ribs as best he could, shot up a dose of morphine, and began flushing out the lacerations he had sustained throughout his escape. Then he'd allowed his eyes to roll back into his head as he went to a opiate-induced lala land and played gin rummy with an animate block of bean curd, that cheating motherfucker.

The reality of war was that it wasn't glamorous. It put money in his account. All Umbrella cared about was the G-virus, and he never forgot the fact that it didn't mattered to them whether they retrieved it off his corpse or not.

Back at the base, when all was said and done and the two remaining Alpha members were locked in isolation, some vestige of peace had been restored. Impressed as Nighthawk had been with him, the pilot had admitted feeling "really, really shitty" when he'd handed him a lukewarm cheese sandwich as his first post-mission meal.

"Was all they had in their damn fridge," the pilot had commented with frustration. "You'd think with the money Umbrella has, they'd stock some goddamn steak and lobster. But nooo, here's some fucking cheese and bread. Not sure whether it helps or not but I managed to microwave it before they caught me. That ain't exactly grilled."

HUNK had given a silent nod of appreciation. Had valued the food for what it was: quick carbs, high calorie fats, and salt - all of which he had needed to replenish. Upon release, he had smoked a victory cigar and recognized that if he'd been a different man, he would have appreciated a blowjob.

The fact that Nighthawk felt he deserved better for what he had accomplished emphasized the young pilot's ignorance. While support personnel tended to be less strict than their soldier counterparts, HUNK found himself wondering where Umbrella had dug this one up from. Regardless, he had performed his duties and had kept his post even despite being relieved and dismissed by the Alpha commander. To that effect, HUNK knew no one better.

"You're not like they say you are," commented Nighthawk, referring to the rumors often spread about him. "I mean, you told me to get out and save myself, which meant leaving you behind to die. That's fucking _crazy_. There's no way you sabotage your squadron to be the sole survivor.

"I saw just a glimpse of what you made it through," he continued, reliving the images reflected in his eyes. "You came out of that station into a massive crowd of those _things_ and you fought your way through. And it wasn't just the infected humans but those big ones, the mutants. I saw one grab you and you fucking jammed a live grenade down its neck and went right on forcing your way through with a dozen infected trying to eat you. To think what you must have went through to make it all the way from the sewers…"

HUNK wasn't one to entertain the awe that showed on the brunette's expression. His only intention was to diffuse it with grim and bitter reality.

"Both of us will be lucky to get out of this alive," he commented dryly, arms remaining comfortably crossed against his chest. "Command may see the outbreak as a sign of failure on our part. In that event, we will be punished accordingly."

Nighthawk visibly swallowed and sat back, suddenly at a loss of what to say. Possibly he envisioned being situated against the wall and executed, ending the very life he valued.

If nothing else, they could be considered liabilities - him more so than the pilot, as the latter had remained removed from the events that had resulted in the release of the T-virus. As acting commander of Alpha team, he had been responsible for the performance of his unit.

It was true that he was solely responsible for transporting the G-virus to Loire Village, of which the executives would greatly benefit, but what the outbreak and subsequent thermonuclear destruction of Raccoon City would cost Umbrella was yet to be determined.

HUNK welcomed the outcome, whatever it was. He was willing to pay the price of his faults and maintained no sentiment regarding what he had survived through.

"...Are you sure?" asked Nighthawk, finally, his face having adopted a new pallor. Then questioned, with ridiculous rhetoric, "Can they really do that?"

"That is war," was HUNK's stoic response.

For him, war never ended.


End file.
